Chapters (79)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Praise for Destroy All Monsters
- Books by Sam J. Miller
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
I noticed the first watcher when we stopped at a citrus cart. Ash was picking through bright pink oranges, and I caught a woman staring at her. She wasn’t wearing ultramarine, so I didn’t think she was a threat. Which just goes to show what a shitty bodyguard I make. But Ash was hooded, and she’d hardly ever been photographed, so I didn’t think we needed to be so on our guard.
The second one wasn’t wearing ultramarine either. She owned the salamander cart we stopped at, looking for the shed skin of a rainbow hellbender, which supposedly helped calm the mind and strengthen othersider abilities. The woman whispered something in the ear of her domesticated baboon, and it hurried off.
And I got very, very scared.
“Ash. We should go,” I said.
She looked around carefully. “Are we in danger?”
“I think we might be.”
Smiling like happy idiots, we turned and started walking.
“Place is packed,” she said. “We can’t run.”
“Neither can they, at least.”
Everything went great, for a solid eleven seconds. And then someone yelled, “Hey, Princess! There! It’s the princess!”
And everything went to hell.
Ash just kept walking. But people stopped, pointed, stared. And out of nowhere stepped three men in ultramarine.
“Your mother’s a monster lover!” someone shouted. Someone else shouted at them to shut up.
Fear. Hate. I felt it all around us. And I felt it inside me as well.
I would have loved to have summoned up a bunch of peaceful, happy vibes to calm them all down, but calm seemed impossible right then. All I had at hand was hate. Anger. But maybe I could use that to throw them off-balance. So, trying my hardest not to try—I focused on it. Felt the tingling up my spine. Let it take hold of me.
And then . . . I pushed it out. Let it fill the air. Aimed it for the faces that frightened me.
Shouting swelled, all around us. Faces reddened. Weapons were drawn. Rage confused people, muddied the waters of who they were mad at.
“On three,” Ash said, slowing down alongside a spice cart.
“Mm-hmm.”
“One,” she said.
“Two,” I said.
“Three,” she said, and seized two huge brass bowls of powdered lightning bugs, slammed them together, tossed them high.
A cloud of bright blue dust filled the air, and we vanished into it.
Thirty-Seven
Ash
Lightning turned the night bright blue, lit up the long, flat, plain-looking building that was the county jail.
I hadn’t even known where it was; that’s what a sheltered life I’d led. But I’d mapped it on my phone and found it, behind where the match factory had been, beside the giant domes where the county kept its mountains of rock salt for snowy winter roads. I’d driven by it a hundred times in my life at least. Ignorant, every time.